Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Leadership & Professional Development
A promotion can recognise years of effort, technical ability and dependable results. It can also introduce a challenge that previous success has not prepared someone to handle: making decisions that other people must understand, trust and carry out. A capable employee may become a manager without learning how to lead a team through disagreement or change.
Some leadership failures begin with reasonable goals. A manager wants better performance, clearer procedures or a more professional workplace. The difficulty arises when that manager becomes so focused on the desired result that the people affected by the decision disappear from view. Concerns become interruptions, experience becomes resistance, and authority becomes a substitute for understanding.
Chinua Achebe’s short story, Dead Men’s Path, offers a useful starting point for reflecting on this problem. Its setting is a school, but the questions it raises can help supervisors, business owners and professionals examine their own decisions. The workplace examples below are practical illustrations, not events from the story.
A leader with a vision—and a serious blind spot
In Achebe’s story, Michael Obi becomes headmaster of Ndume Central School. He is eager to modernise it and improve its surroundings. When he discovers a village footpath crossing the grounds, he treats it as an obstacle to his plans and closes it. The route, however, has spiritual significance for the local community.
A village priest explains why the path matters, but Obi dismisses the concerns rather than seeking an accommodation. The conflict escalates, school property is damaged, and his improvement project ends in a damaging confrontation. His ambition to create a better school has not equipped him to understand the community around it.
For a career-focused reading, the central question is how a leader can pursue improvement while taking other people’s knowledge and concerns seriously. The story is fiction, not research proving a management formula. It nevertheless invites a difficult reflection: what might I be overlooking because I am already convinced that my plan is right?
1. Listen before deciding what needs to change
A new manager often wants to demonstrate value quickly. There may be pressure to reduce costs, improve service or solve problems that colleagues have accepted for years. Acting promptly can be necessary, but acting without understanding can create avoidable complications.
Imagine a warehouse supervisor changing shift times to improve dispatch performance. The proposed timetable looks efficient on a spreadsheet. A conversation with employees might reveal that public transport does not operate early enough for the new starting time. Another discussion might uncover a supplier schedule that makes the change less useful than expected. These are facts the supervisor needs to evaluate, not distractions from the task.
Before changing an established practice, ask why it exists, what problem it solves and what would happen if it disappeared. Speak with people who perform the work as well as those who approve it. Look for quieter colleagues whose experience may be missed in a large meeting.
Listening does not promise everyone their preferred outcome. It gives the decision a better foundation and allows the leader to explain which concerns were addressed, which could not be accommodated and why.
2. Treat technical competence and leadership as different responsibilities
An excellent accountant can produce accurate reports. A skilled engineer can diagnose a difficult fault. An experienced customer-service employee can resolve a complaint. These strengths matter after promotion, but a team leader also has to organise work, set expectations, give feedback and help other people improve.
A common difficulty is assuming that colleagues should work exactly as the manager does. Instructions become compressed because the task feels obvious. Questions are interpreted as a lack of commitment. The manager then takes work back, becomes overloaded and concludes that delegation does not work.
A more useful approach is to define the expected result, agree on the resources and authority available, and arrange a suitable check-in. Ask the employee to describe their understanding of the task. This can reveal a misunderstanding before it becomes a missed deadline.
When preparing for promotion, build examples of helping others succeed. Train a colleague, coordinate a small project or practise giving clear, respectful feedback. Being the person who solves every problem is different from developing a team that can solve problems responsibly.
3. Understand stakeholders before announcing a solution
A decision can affect people outside the manager’s immediate team. Customers, suppliers, neighbouring departments, community members and business partners may depend on an arrangement that appears inefficient when viewed from only one office.
Consider a business introducing a new ordering system. Management may focus on faster processing and better records. Staff may need training, customers may need accessible instructions, and suppliers may need time to adjust their documents. If these requirements are discovered after launch, the business may face confusion that earlier consultation could have reduced.
Start with a simple stakeholder list. Identify who performs the work, who receives the service, who authorises the change and who bears the cost if something goes wrong. Ask each group about likely difficulties and useful alternatives. Be clear about which parts of the proposal are open to discussion.
Consultation becomes frustrating when a decision is already final but people are encouraged to believe they can influence it. Honest limits are more respectful than an invitation to participate that has no practical meaning.
4. Make it possible for people to disagree respectfully
A team can appear cooperative while important concerns remain unspoken. Employees may avoid raising an issue if previous questions were met with embarrassment, anger or dismissal. Silence therefore deserves attention: it may reflect agreement, but it may also reflect caution.
Managers influence this through ordinary interactions. If someone identifies a flaw in your plan, ask them to explain the likely consequence and any evidence they have. Acknowledge a useful correction without turning the exchange into a contest over status. Where the concern is mistaken, explain your reasoning without attacking the person.
You can invite better discussion with specific questions: What have we not considered? Which part will be hardest to implement? What would make this unsafe or impractical? These questions give colleagues a clearer opening than asking whether anyone has a problem.
Respectful disagreement still needs boundaries. Personal attacks, discrimination and repeated disruption should be addressed. The aim is a working environment in which a concern can be examined on its merits and decisions can be challenged through appropriate channels.
5. Combine humility with clear accountability
Humility in leadership means recognising that your information and judgement can be incomplete. It does not require avoiding difficult decisions, lowering standards or allowing every discussion to continue indefinitely. A manager remains responsible for choosing a course of action and explaining it.
There will be situations in which legal obligations, safety requirements or urgent operational needs limit the options available. In those circumstances, explain the requirement, identify any choices that remain and give people practical support to comply. Empathy does not remove an essential standard; it helps the leader understand what successful implementation will require.
If a decision turns out badly, separate responsibility from blame. State what you decided, what you expected and what the evidence now shows. Explain the corrective action and who will take it. Acknowledging a mistake is useful when it leads to a change in behaviour, rather than becoming a substitute for fixing the problem.
Teams need to know both that their manager will listen and that someone will make a clear decision when the discussion is complete.
A practical routine for your next important decision
You do not need an elaborate process for every workplace choice. For a decision that changes how others work, however, a short written check can improve the quality of your preparation:
- Define the problem. Write down what needs to improve and the evidence that shows it.
- Identify the people affected. Include those who will implement the decision and those who depend on their work.
- Invite practical concerns. Ask about workload, access, safety, training, timing and unintended consequences.
- Compare the options. Consider whether a trial, adjustment or alternative could achieve the goal with fewer difficulties.
- Explain the decision. State what will happen, who is responsible, what support is available and what remains unchanged.
- Set a review point. Agree when you will check results and how people should report problems.
A small trial can be useful when the decision is reversible. For example, testing a revised handover process with one team can reveal missing information before it is introduced more widely. Decide in advance what evidence would justify continuing, changing or stopping the trial.
What this means for your career
Leadership development is relevant before you receive a management title. Employees exercise influence when they share information, organise a handover, support a colleague or raise a concern constructively. These situations provide opportunities to practise clear communication and sound judgement.
When applying for a supervisory role, give examples of how you worked with people as well as what you delivered. Describe the situation, your responsibility, the action you took and the result. If you changed your approach after listening to others, explain why. An example of thoughtful adjustment can say more about your judgement than a claim that your original plan was perfect.
For jobseekers comparing opportunities, an interview is also a chance to learn about leadership expectations. Ask how new employees receive feedback, how teams contribute to process improvements and what support is available to first-time managers. Listen for concrete examples. A single answer cannot establish the whole workplace culture, but it can help you decide what further questions to ask.
As you explore opportunities on SmartLinksJobs, consider the environment in which you want to develop, alongside the job title and location. A promotion is a useful milestone; becoming someone others can rely on is a continuing professional responsibility.
Competence becomes stronger when it makes room for others
Michael Obi’s experience offers a warning about the gap between having a vision and understanding the people who will live with its consequences. In a workplace, that gap can appear in an ignored question, an unexplained instruction or an assumption that an established practice has no value.
The lesson is to approach improvement with curiosity as well as conviction. Understand the problem, hear relevant perspectives, decide clearly and review what happens. Strong leadership gives people a way to contribute without leaving responsibility uncertain.
Career insight: your ability to listen, explain and work through disagreement deserves the same deliberate development as your technical skills. The next time you want to change a process, begin by understanding the people who depend on it.
Source inspiration and further reading
This article is an original career-focused interpretation inspired by Chinua Achebe’s Dead Men’s Path (1953). The brief story summary can be checked against EBSCO’s literary reference entry. The workplace examples and practical guidance above are original illustrations, not quotations from Achebe or claims of research findings.
Related teaching resource: Moral Complexity in Leadership: Hubris and Humility—“Dead Men’s Path,” by Chinua Achebe, Kellogg School of Management. The full teaching case was not accessed or reproduced in preparing this article.